Beauty and the Beast perhaps represents the pinnacle of the Ashman/Menken collaboration. Brimming with intelligent, witty songs, everything about it is just splendid. As you move from The Little Mermaid to Aladdin, the interesting tid bits that you pick up become more and more interesting. The first difference is the alternate version of the Wolf Attack that the producers started off in a too jokey way and you can see there point. The actual attack itself is pretty much like the final version. Howard Ashman provides yet another splendid voice as Gaston in the demo version as well as turning in some interesting alternate lyrics. Lost lyrics in some of the classic songs are particularly interesting and the ones in both the demo of Gaston and the reprise are great fun indeed. Some of the alternate lyrics found their way into the stage show version of the movie. As did the song Human Again. This, as Menken points out in his informal notes, is the longest song that he and Ashman wrote and it's just a shame that it wasn't included in the film. The demo is even longer than the version that was actually used in the stage show and includes a few scenes of Belle teaching the Beast to read. I think that it was perhaps a case that the demo was just a little bit too long and so the producers felt it wouldn't really hold people's attention, although there would have been visual inserts in the film showing the progression of the relationship between Belle and the Beast. The replacement, Something There is, as Menken points out, spectacularly successful and sums up the themes of Human Again in a much more succinct form.
The work tape for Beauty and the Beast shows how some of the original lyrics were changed as well as how the lyrics were fitted to different phrases of the music. As with The Little Mermaid, the score tracks are placed in amongst the songs giving them more relevance to the story, which is how it should have been on the original score. The final point of interest is the alternate version of the Transformation. I was actually expecting it to be the entire track, but it's just the first minute and a half before the actual transformation takes place. Menken thinks it was too intrusive, but I have to say I thought it was lovely and offers a gorgeous cello rendition of the Beauty and the Beast theme.
Total Time ~ 67:26